The White House has finished its review of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) proposal to mandate event data recorders (EDR) in all new vehicles.

Now that the White House Office of Management Budget has completed the review, the NHTSA is preparing to finalize the regulation. The proposal suggests increasing the number of new vehicles with EDRs from 91.6 percent today to 100 percent of light-duty cars and trucks.

Event data recorders, also known as "black boxes," collect driver data such as speed, use of a seatbelt, whether brakes were applied, etc. before and after a vehicle crash. The idea behind them is to deploy better safety measures for vehicles as well as better overall vehicle design.

The NHTSA originally said it'd create a proposal for the White House concerning EDR regulation by the end of 2011. After doing so, the White House Office of Management Budget delayed comment or review for a year.

Some automakers already place EDRs in all of their vehicles, such as Ford, General Motors Mazda and Toyota.

The road to EDR regulation hasn't been all smooth, though. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes Toyota, Volkswagen AG and Detroit's Big Three, had issues with both driver privacy and the cost of these black boxes.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers complained in May 2010 that the black boxes suggested by the government were too expensive to deploy in all vehicles. Further, it stated that EDRs could potentially be abused by the government.

"Event data recorders help our engineers understand how cars perform in the real world but looking forward, we need to make sure we preserve privacy," said Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers spokeswoman Gloria Bergquist. "Automakers do not access EDR data without consumer permission, and any government requirements to install EDRs on all vehicles must include steps to protect consumer privacy."

In April of this year, the U.S. Senate passed a highway bill called the "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act", also known as MAP21. The bill aimed to require all new 2015 model year vehicles to have black boxes for record vehicle data.

I for one am glad they would implement a black box in a car. They are ideal for recording accidents and determining whose fault it could have been. Furthermore, if someone isn't wearing their seat belt when they are in an accident, they should be liable for their own injuries and these boxes can detect that. Plus, fraudulent fees due to "injuries" could be avoided by putting the recorded information into a model to determine worst case scenarios. If you get a ticket for something you didn't do, you now have proof. I only see a win win in this situation.

Right, because having data goes poof is exactly how "Event data recorders help our engineers understand how cars perform in the real world."

Please don't just state random opinions and claim them to be fact. We are all throwing out theories here.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure they know how to program an EDR to compress data well so you get more than a few days worth of information.1. You don't need to collect data for every second.2. That takes up so little memory.3. Thumb drives can hold over 100 GB.

I know the third one is a stretch since they won't use something that expensive or large, but the chance that your data would just go poof by driving a bit more is imo a joke.

There are many ways to deal with the scenario once having an EDR. So even if you were right about your data going "poof," you could still battle a ticket.

You don't think about all the 5mph accidents where people get sued and have to pay money to someone throughout their lifetime cause they claim they hurt their neck. This would be a great way to possibly stop this madness.